The introduction historically and theoretically situates the long 1980s, a period whose end was marked by the declaration across much academic and popular American culture that there could be no ...
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The introduction historically and theoretically situates the long 1980s, a period whose end was marked by the declaration across much academic and popular American culture that there could be no alternative to a market economy. At a time when the common sense held that the economy could not be otherwise conceived, novelists, journalists, filmmakers, and bankers themselves began to reimagine the capitalist economy as one that was intimate and masculine, global and anxiety-producing precisely because it was newly financial. Tracing how finance became legible within political economy, literary theory, and popular culture, the introduction develops two concepts that organize the study: “financial print culture” or all textual material about finance, from the stock report to the news report to the “how to” guide to personal wealth; and “financial form” or a peculiar mix of language and narrative that delimits financial transactions in political, economic, and literary texts.Less

Introduction

Leigh Claire La Berge

Published in print: 2014-12-30

The introduction historically and theoretically situates the long 1980s, a period whose end was marked by the declaration across much academic and popular American culture that there could be no alternative to a market economy. At a time when the common sense held that the economy could not be otherwise conceived, novelists, journalists, filmmakers, and bankers themselves began to reimagine the capitalist economy as one that was intimate and masculine, global and anxiety-producing precisely because it was newly financial. Tracing how finance became legible within political economy, literary theory, and popular culture, the introduction develops two concepts that organize the study: “financial print culture” or all textual material about finance, from the stock report to the news report to the “how to” guide to personal wealth; and “financial form” or a peculiar mix of language and narrative that delimits financial transactions in political, economic, and literary texts.

This book reveals how finance metamorphosed from an economic specialization into a hegemonic aesthetic form and, as it did so, became a site of contest and redefinition for realist and postmodern ...
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This book reveals how finance metamorphosed from an economic specialization into a hegemonic aesthetic form and, as it did so, became a site of contest and redefinition for realist and postmodern American literature. Reading contemporary novels, financiers’ autobiographies, financial journalism, visual culture, and political economy, the book covers 1979–2003, a period of stock market crashes, the advent of 24-hour banking, and the return of the individual financier to a place of social prominence. The same period witnessed the canonization of postmodernism in literary studies and a furious reaction to that elevation in literary and popular cultures. Postmodern novels engaged these financial changes, as did their realist counterparts. Tracing how the discrete and often antagonistic events of financialization and its literary and cultural critiques were realized and institutionalized, the book provides a cultural history of literary form that challenges the broadly held view that finance finds its chief expression in a postmodern mode because finance is abstract and postmodernism is fragmentary. Rather, it demonstrates that in a period of financialization, journalism, realism and postmodernism were in conversation and ultimately agreement about what “finance” was. Novels used financial journalism to derive an understanding of the scene and language of finance as masculine, complex, and violent. Conversely, novelistic and filmic representation of finance encouraged journalism to consider whether a new financial era had dawned and how it should be represented. Bringing these two archives together, the book outlines a feedback loop whereby postmodernism became more canonical, realism became more postmodern, and finance became a distinct cultural object.Less

Scandals and Abstraction : Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s

Leigh Claire La Berge

Published in print: 2014-12-30

This book reveals how finance metamorphosed from an economic specialization into a hegemonic aesthetic form and, as it did so, became a site of contest and redefinition for realist and postmodern American literature. Reading contemporary novels, financiers’ autobiographies, financial journalism, visual culture, and political economy, the book covers 1979–2003, a period of stock market crashes, the advent of 24-hour banking, and the return of the individual financier to a place of social prominence. The same period witnessed the canonization of postmodernism in literary studies and a furious reaction to that elevation in literary and popular cultures. Postmodern novels engaged these financial changes, as did their realist counterparts. Tracing how the discrete and often antagonistic events of financialization and its literary and cultural critiques were realized and institutionalized, the book provides a cultural history of literary form that challenges the broadly held view that finance finds its chief expression in a postmodern mode because finance is abstract and postmodernism is fragmentary. Rather, it demonstrates that in a period of financialization, journalism, realism and postmodernism were in conversation and ultimately agreement about what “finance” was. Novels used financial journalism to derive an understanding of the scene and language of finance as masculine, complex, and violent. Conversely, novelistic and filmic representation of finance encouraged journalism to consider whether a new financial era had dawned and how it should be represented. Bringing these two archives together, the book outlines a feedback loop whereby postmodernism became more canonical, realism became more postmodern, and finance became a distinct cultural object.

The essays in this book offer a profile of religion and its relationship to consumption in the modern period. Together they demonstrate how religion manifests in efforts to mass-produce relations of ...
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The essays in this book offer a profile of religion and its relationship to consumption in the modern period. Together they demonstrate how religion manifests in efforts to mass-produce relations of value. Through essays on specific commodities, celebrities, and industries, this book shows how much of consumer life is itself a religious enterprise, religious in the sense of enshrining certain commitments stronger than almost any other acts of social participation. Whereas earlier scholars took as a given the perpetuity of denominated, sectarian religions, this books turns to those practices, businesses, and persons seemingly unhooked from denominational life, such as the universal labor of parenting or the practice of binge viewing, and observes the kinds of social concession and sectarian resistance these practices convey. Using the marketplace as the primary archive of religion, this book shows how certain forms of social life reappear in culture as ways to think through and enact principles.Less

Consuming Religion

Kathryn Lofton

Published in print: 2017-09-12

The essays in this book offer a profile of religion and its relationship to consumption in the modern period. Together they demonstrate how religion manifests in efforts to mass-produce relations of value. Through essays on specific commodities, celebrities, and industries, this book shows how much of consumer life is itself a religious enterprise, religious in the sense of enshrining certain commitments stronger than almost any other acts of social participation. Whereas earlier scholars took as a given the perpetuity of denominated, sectarian religions, this books turns to those practices, businesses, and persons seemingly unhooked from denominational life, such as the universal labor of parenting or the practice of binge viewing, and observes the kinds of social concession and sectarian resistance these practices convey. Using the marketplace as the primary archive of religion, this book shows how certain forms of social life reappear in culture as ways to think through and enact principles.